More lottery draws likely to have been rigged by Eddie Tipton

MORE LOTTERY DRAWS LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN RIGGED BY EDDIE TIPTON

Last August Eddie Tipton from Iowa, USA, was sentenced to 25 years for rigging lottery draws in five American states. Now a new discovery indicates that there may be more draws that have been affected by his computer program.The former Multi-State Lottery Association security official was arrested and charged after asking a friend to claim a lottery win.The 52-year-old initially denied the offences but he later admitted rigging lottery draws including some in Iowa, USA, worth millions of dollars. That led to him being found guilty of fraud for rigging a $14.3m Hot Lotto draw in 2010.Tipton had written a computer code that gave him the ability to predict the randomly drawn numbers of jackpot draws in as many as 17 states and then claim the winnings. It’s been revealed that the code remained active and undetected for nearly a decade.Finally, in 2015, Iowa officials discovered what was going on. They believed Tipton and his accomplices were able to defraud the system on certain days each year, initially thought to be November 23 and December 29. Now an independent security audit has revealed that May 27 can be added to those two other dates.The sentenced official told investigators they had identified all the fraudulent wins in Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas and Oklahoma and that he hadn’t attempted any others. A different story was told by his brother, Tommy Tipton, who claims he was given numbers for at least two other drawings but failed to produce jackpot wins.Evan Teitelman of SeNet International Corp. helped carry out a security evaluation but that’s not being made available for an important civil case. That sees Larry Dawson from Iowa, claiming he should have won a higher jackpot due to the fact the previous win by Tipton was fraudulent.In a separate case, Burlington, Iowa, resident Dale Culler is additionally seeking a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all players cheated out of lottery wins by Tipton's manipulated drawings.That’s likely to include Amir Massihzadeh from Colorado, who had to share a $4.8m Colorado Lotto jackpot in November 2005 with two other players who were part of the Tipton scandal. Culler’s attorney, Gary Dickey commented, "Any drawing that was rigged to produce predetermined numbers was not random. Even if no jackpot was claimed, the players would still have been defrauded by being deprived of the random drawing they were promised.”